Recently returned from 8 months Ushuaia to Alaska. Got loads of photos and video clips. The clips are MP4 or .mov in H.264 format. I want to put them together with jpg's into movie or two to present at travellers meets. I've done this before on a PC and it looks fine on pc or our blog/youtube but have never created a movie to show from the pc to a projector onto a big screen. I don't want to waste huge amounts of time creating something that looks ok on the computer screen but rubbish on the big screen (at HU for instance!) and then have to start again.
I've got Adobe Lightroom that I could use to create the 'movies/presentations' and am now on an Apple MacBook Pro.
So, if I put a variety of .jpg's and mp4/mov video clips together to create a movie to show on a projector does anyone know what the pitfalls are before I start? Any advice gratefully received. Sorry if question is not super specific and not strictly a bike question. Maybe someone could direct me to someone who knows this sort of stuff? (I don't have easy access to a projector to test things prior to talks)
Thanks in advance folks ....... Jim
Travels in the Americas | From the bottom of the Americas to the top, 2-up on a motorbike

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If you think you can, or you think you can't, you're probably right

I'm currently doing much the same on a MacBook Pro using Final Cut Pro and Photoshop. I use Lightroom for sorting through stills but I'd never have considered putting a movie together on it. I used iMovie for the last few projects but Apple have dumbed the latest version down to the point where it's unusable.

I have video footage and stills taken on three iPhones of various ages, a GoPro and my regular Panasonic video camera and Final Cut seems to be happy with all of it.

I don't have a projector to test things on but so far it looks ok when I've run it on our 50" tv.

Don't underestimate how much work goes into constructing this kind of thing. At the moment I'm putting in about a couple hour's work for a minute of footage (and it still looks like amateur night).

Thanks that's most helpful. It's interesting that Final Cut handles all your clips from various devices OK. May I ask though (& this is where I really have no knowledge) when you put your stuff together and make a presentation with mixed stills and video clips what type of file does final cut output?? I'm wondering if there are tripwires I need to be aware of in that final part of the process? When I made some movies on my Lenovo Windows PC with the free software it had on it (MS Movie Maker I think it was called) the final product was output as an MP4 file (just like my helmet cam actually) which seems to upload and work fine on our blog. What does gucci software like Final Cut Pro output?
Jim

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If you think you can, or you think you can't, you're probably right

Just waiting for my latest video to convert out of Movie Maker on a windows Lenovo PC as I read this post ! I have used a mixture of stills ( 2 formats ) and video from two sources in avi / MTS format and added music and voice over. Its 21mins long, over 3GB in file size at 1080HD and it did it. I worked in blocks of 5mins each, exported to mp4 and then stitched the resulting 5min blocks together to make the final Movie. Despite the crap footage/camera work (due to equipment fail we had to use an unsuitable camera), however the results are satisfactory. I can give you Youtube link if you wish to see result.

Anyway, in my experience, if it looks good on screen of pc, it should look good on a projector output, just bigger. WYSIWYG with those things. I'm not sure on how you would go with any sound on the movie? And as backofbeyond says it does take along time. Its taken me many late nights for weeks to put my latest effort together.

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Regards Tim

Learning my craft for the big stuff, it won't be long now and it's not that far anyway

Thanks g6snl
would love to see the youtube link.
Jim

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If you think you can, or you think you can't, you're probably right

and if it is WYSIWYG then that's good, if it's ok on my screen etc.
I think I'm going to end up doing a short video using whatever software I end up with (Final Cut Pro seems so expensive though) and then I'll find someone with a projector and see how it looks and sounds before I start on the big 'project'.
Thanks for your input.
Jim

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If you think you can, or you think you can't, you're probably right

Please excuse the poor cam work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQiI...ature=youtu.be

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Regards Tim

Learning my craft for the big stuff, it won't be long now and it's not that far anyway

There's a long list of output options Final Cut so you can pretty much output whatever you want. IIRC the recommended method is to "export" a high quality master file and then use that to subsequently produce a file suitable for your end use. H.264 (for example) is one of the many options.

The downside of FCP is (as you mentioned) the price. I'm (kind of) fortunate as I'm a pro photographer for my day job so it's a business expense. There used to be a cheaper version - Final Cut Express - around a few years ago but that seems to have vanished of late. Apple are annoyingly prone to doing stuff like that and then stopping the older versions from running on later operating systems. I still have a 10yr old version of FCP running on a 10yr old Mac but it's too slow to edit HD footage on. Microsoft, for all their faults, tend to be much better with this.

p.s. Tim - just enjoyed watching your video. Very well done (and your wife is a star!). Can I ask about your use of commercial music in parts of it. I've always worked on the premise that if the final version would be shown in public - YouTube for example, or at a bike meeting - or even in the local village hall - then commercial music = royalty / legal issues to resolve.

Because I'm using commercial music in parts of what I'm currently editing it will just be for family and friends to view and any version that ended up on YouTube would have to have the sound track revised. I'm not even certain where I stand with music that was playing in the background when I was filming other stuff - something that happened a couple of times with clips I want to use.

Borrow a projector, then run some tests using original files from your cameras and some rendered (output) from your editing software in various file formats, this way you can compare them back to back to see how each holds up on your large screen, best to use clips with a lot of movement in them as this will show up any issues better. If you can hook your camera directly to the projector via an hdmi port you will also be able to check your laptop video card is up to the job as well, by playing the same file from the cam and then from the laptop, this should tell you if the graphics card is doing its job well enough.

Yeah that was something I wondered about too, in the end on my first attempt at video (Turkey on you tube) I decided to do two versions. One for home use only and one for youtube. In the end I mistakenly uploaded the wrong one to youtube. All that seemed to happen was I got told some material was copyright etc...in a message and had to accept this was the case. The result is the video is not available in some countries ( DE I think is one) and it won't play on some devices, mainly apple? The only other thing is I can not use the video to make money from adds, no great loss for me. So for Nepal video I just did what I wanted again. so far so good. I have seen so many other videos with obvious music issues which remain in place. I am told Vimeo is a bit less fussy about this stuff, not used it so can't verify this to be true. My Turkey video has been online for over 12 months and no bills have dropped the the mail box

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Regards Tim

Learning my craft for the big stuff, it won't be long now and it's not that far anyway

found this site that explains copyright issues for video

Using Copyrighted Music in Videos: When is it Legal?